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**WORK IN PROGRESS **

(FKA Trie Log Pruning)

Step by Step Guide

IMPORTANT: we strongly recommend reading the rest of this documentation before running these commands because your node’s configuration may require changes to these commands…

(Targeting 24.1.2 release, but currently you must be on the besu main branch for this to work)

1. Update besu config to add --Xbonsai-limit-trie-logs-enabled but don’t restart yet

2. Stop besu

3. (optional) Run:
   sudo /usr/local/bin/besu/bin/besu --data-storage-format=BONSAI --data-path=/var/lib/besu --sync-mode=X_SNAP storage x-trie-log prune

4. Start besu (remembering to run sudo systemctl daemon-reload if you use a systemd service file as per CoinCashew and Somer)

5. Look out for Limit trie logs enabled: retention: 512; prune window: 30000 in your besu config printout during startup

6. Enjoy more GBs

What?

We have a new experimental feature available: --Xbonsai-limit-trie-logs-enabled which aims to keep Besu’s database as small as it can be. After a brief grace period, we intend to make this enabled by default for stakers. This is only relevant if you're using data-storage-format=BONSAI .

From our testing, we estimate this will save users > 3 GB per week in database growth. Early testing indicates Besu’s overall database growth with this enabled is ~7 GB per week (thanks Yorick!) which is on par with geth.

Why?

Some users noticed that resyncing Besu can free up disk space, especially for longer running nodes. This is despite --data-storage-format=BONSAI having “implicit pruning”. More on this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/12xnxxi/clearing_up_besubonsai_confusion_on_state_growth/

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The Trie Logs are retained in order to cope with chain reorgs. After each block is finalized, Trie Logs older than that are no longer required so it is safe to remove them from both the node's and the network's point of view.

How?

If you want to use this feature before it is enabled by default, simply add this option to your besu command: --Xbonsai-limit-trie-logs-enabled
When you restart besu it will begin pruning, block by block (and a cheeky bit during besu startup).

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If you have a long-running node, this will not immediately clear your backlog of trie logs in the same way that resyncing does. In order to do this we’re providing a “run once” offline command to immediately prune all your old trie logs in a few minutes or less. Note, this requires besu to be shutdown before running, but downtime will be minimal. You will not need to run this command a second time if you keep --Xbonsai-limit-trie-logs-enabled.

I’m impatient, reduce my database size now!

Okay, okay - we got you! We built a one-off besu command to remove this extra data (usually in seconds)and avoid having to resync. For minimal downtime, we recommend running this command before restarting Besu --Xbonsai-limit-trie-logs-enabled (easiest to do it all at the same time).

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sudo /usr/local/bin/besu/bin/besu --config-file=besu-config.toml storage x-trie-log prune

Subcommand Troubleshooting

The prune command should look something like this for mainnet users…
sudo /usr/local/bin/besu/bin/besu --data-path=/var/lib/besu --data-storage-format=BONSAI --sync-mode=X_SNAP storage x-trie-log prune

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sudo /usr/local/bin/besu/bin/besu --network=holesky --sync-mode=X_SNAP --data-storage-format=BONSAI --data-path=/var/lib/besu storage x-trie-log prune

The Details

Too much detail for users but if you’re interested:

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